‘Titus thought they’d lost him, but he was back nosing around for toast and marmalade the next morning. Anyway, he was such a distinctive-looking horse that his owner, some Arab sheik whom Titus was liberating, recognized him and was so grateful he let Titus keep him. Arthur’s got quite a good pedigree.

‘Titus brought him back to England, and gave him to his father, my Uncle Alastair, who was a trainer and who won a lot of races with him. I was left some money by an aunt and Alastair was in financial trouble — he was always bad with money — so I spent the lot buying Arthur from him. I’d always loved the horse. Dad was absolutely livid.’

‘Ay’m not surprised,’ said Marigold, shocked. ‘Your uncle shouldn’t have taken all your inheritance.’

‘You haven’t met Arthur,’ said Lysander fondly. ‘Anyway, poor Uncle Alastair died of a heart attack and Arthur fell first time out last September. The vet said rest him for a year, but Mum and I were determined to get him sound by next season. Then Mum died in October.’ For a second Lysander’s hands clenched on the wheel. Then, swinging off the road and destroying any hope that Marigold might have had that he might slow down on the stony track up to the cottage, he added, ‘So, I’m going to get him sound if it kills me.’

‘Yes, Ay can see that,’ said Marigold, only thankful to be alive amid so much death, as Lysander drew up with a jerk outside the stables behind the cottage. ‘Oh, how adorable,’ she squeaked.

For the great grey horse hanging out of his box was tugging hay from a net so untidily that Tiny, his black Shetland stable-mate, who was attacking another net hung below his, had nearly vanished under a thatch of dropped hay.

‘The sweet wee thing.’ Marigold rushed forward to hug the little pony.

‘I wouldn’t,’ warned Lysander.

As Tiny lashed out with a lightning off-hind, he pulled Marigold out of the way just in time.

‘Tiny,’ he added, giving the pony a sharp boot on the rump, ‘is an absolute bitch.’

‘She ought to meet Nikki,’ said Marigold with a sniff. ‘Nikki said—’

‘Basically I only keep Tiny,’ interrupted Lysander hastily, before Marigold could get into her stride, ‘because Arthur’s so bats about her. She henpecks him dreadfully, and she’s tried to kill Jack several times.’

Scooping Jack up, Lysander held him so he could lick Arthur’s nose, then plonked the little dog between the horse’s huge flopping ears. Immediately Jack tightroped down Arthur’s straggly mane and settled down into the small of his back.

‘How adorable,’ sighed Marigold, giving Tiny a very wide berth, as she stroked Arthur. ‘He’s ’uge, isn’t he?’

‘Eighteen hands,’ said Lysander proudly. ‘He was the biggest horse in training. The public still send him fan mail and Twix bars, because they know he loves them.’

Arthur was pure white except for his grey nose and dark eyes which were fringed with long, straight, white eyelashes and edged with white on the inside corners, as though some make-up artist had wanted to widen them.

‘Arthur looks as though he’s been around,’ said Marigold.

‘Basically he has,’ said Lysander. ‘He’s lived in back gardens in Fulham and on Dolly’s parents’ lawn; there was a row about that, and he spent three days in the orchard of a woman whose house I was — er — trying to sell.’

Not anxious to expand on that, Lysander pointed to the traffic cones and rubber tyres he’d hung over Arthur’s door to give him something to biff around and amuse himself with.

‘He’s so good about being inside.’ Lysander pulled Arthur’s ears. ‘He just adores being petted. He never bites Tiny back and if Jack attacks his ankles, he just looks down in amazement. If he were a human, he’d put on a smoking jacket and velvet-crested slippers every night. He’s such a gent.’

‘Like his master,’ said Marigold warmly.

‘I wish Dolly thought so,’ sighed Lysander. ‘She’s just sent me a really sarky card: CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR RETIREMENT. Now watch this.’

As he produced a tin of Fanta out of his Barbour pocket, Arthur gave a deep Vesuvius whicker. Pulling back the tab, Lysander put the tin between Arthur’s big yellow teeth and, with gurgles of ecstasy, Arthur tipped back his head and drained the lot.

‘He can’t get up in the morning without his bowl of coffee,’ said Lysander retrieving the tin, ‘but only if it has two spoonfuls of sugar.’

February 13th was a day for celebration. Marigold weighed in a stone lighter at nine stone four, and even Patch had shed five pounds and could wriggle through the cat door again. After a frugal lunch of clear soup, fennel-and-kiwi-fruit salad, Marigold was virtuously stuffing invitations to a Save the Children Bring and Buy into envelopes, instead of white chocolates into herself, and Lysander was sitting with his muddy booted legs up on the table, trying to compose a Valentine poem to Dolly who still hadn’t forgiven him for his exploits in Palm Beach.

‘Ferdie’s brilliant at writing poems, but he’s out and I must get it in the post. What rhymes with green?’

‘Keen, mean, been, my queen, sheen,’ suggested Marigold. ‘Did you know birds choose their mates on Valentine’s Day?’ She peered out at the crowded bird-table. ‘And that in the spring the chaffinch gets a pinker breast and the blackbird a more golden beak and look at that starlin’ his feathers are all purple and green in the sunshine.’

But Lysander was looking at Marigold. Her skin was glowing pink, not dead white laced with hectic red. Her eyes, no longer bloodshot, were the same hazel as the catkins dropping their pollen on the kitchen table. There was no resemblance now to a Beryl Cook lady.

‘Sod the birds! You’re the one looking terrific,’ he said, tipping back his chair.

‘Oh, get on with you,’ said Marigold, putting two invitations into the same envelope, and blushing crimson. ‘Look at those sweet little great tits, swingin’ on that coconut.’ Then her happiness evaporated. ‘That was the coconut Larry won at the village fête last year.’

‘How d’you know so much about birds?’ asked Lysander, anxious to distract her.

‘Ay thought Ay should study wildlaife when we moved to the country. Unfortunately Larry got interested in another kaind of bird.’ That’s a sort of joke, if a very weak one, Marigold thought in surprise. Perhaps I’m beginning to laugh again.

‘How are you getting on with your poem?’ she asked. Proudly Lysander handed it across the table.

‘The rose is red, the grarse is green,’ read Marigold. ‘Open your legs and i’le turn you to creem.’

‘Oh, Laysander!’ Marigold was shocked rigid. ‘Ay don’t think that’s in the raight spirit. Why don’t you pop down to The Apple Tree? They’ve got some beautiful floral cards, with such lovely sentiments inside, or even left blank to record your message. Ay weakened,’ Marigold hung her head, ‘and sent one with primroses on to Larry. Ay trayed to get it back, and nearly got my hand stuck in the letter-box. Anyway, Ay don’t think Nikki’ll let it through, she gets the kettle out for anythin’ marked prayvate and confidential.’

Lysander was so worried Marigold would get no Valentines that he rushed off to The Apple Tree and bought her the largest card in the shop, which he handed to her with a huge bunch of daffodils the next morning, so she wouldn’t get all excited and think it was from Larry.

‘Oh, that’s beautiful,’ said Marigold, deeply touched.

Inside Lysander had written: ‘To Marrygold who gets prittier eech day. love Lysander.’

I didn’t marry gold, she thought sadly. It’s Nikki that’s going to do that, as soon as Larry divorces me.

Seeing her face cloud over, Lysander handed her another present. More Sellotape than gift wrap, thought Marigold fondly as she broke her way in, and found a size ten pair of black-velvet shorts.

‘They’re lovely,’ she squeaked, ‘but you must be jokin’.’

‘Give it three weeks,’ said Lysander, ‘and we’ll be there.’

‘We,’ mumbled Marigold. How very nice.

‘As we can’t celebrate your great weight loss by getting pissed this evening,’ added Lysander, ‘I bought some magic mushrooms in Rutminster.’

‘Ay can’t take drugs,’ said Marigold, appalled. ‘Ay’m hoping to become a JP.’

‘It’s just a natural product,’ said Lysander airily. ‘We can make tea out of them, you’ll love it and you won’t put on an ounce.’

‘Ay’m supposed to be going to a Best-Kept Village committee.’

‘Cancel it. Crocodile Dundee’s on television.’

‘Ay really shouldn’t,’ said Marigold. That was the third committee meeting she’d cancelled that week.

What a very sweet boy, thought Marigold. When they were jogging he helped her over stiles and caught her elbow if she slipped in the mud or on the icy roads, and he always opened doors and helped her on with her coat. He was probably doing it because he thought of her as a pathetic old wrinkly, she told herself sternly, but Larry had never done any of these things in eighteen years. And Lysander never got cross.

She loved the elegant way he draped himself over sofas and window seats, and suddenly dropped off to sleep like a puppy. And he was so appreciative of her cooking even if it was clear soup, fennel and kiwi fruit.

‘I got a tip-off about some seriously good dope, in Cathedral Lane in Rutminster of all unlikely places,’ Lysander told Marigold as they jogged up the north side of Paradise a fortnight later, ‘and this nutter pressed his face against the car window and said “Are you looking for Jesus?” I said, “No, I’m looking for No. 37.” Anyway, they’re offering an eighth of an ounce for the price of a sixteenth. If they’re discounting drugs, the recession must be biting.’